Twelve - Derek

I hate waking up on the sofa.

My knees ache cause it’s too short, my neck aches from the armrest, and my mouth feels like I’ve been licking concrete. The television’s still burbling, and I can hear Sandy scratching at the back door.

I groan, and stretch, and then remember.

I stole the dog. Got caught too. And then seeing two Julia’s. Two of you.

I laugh. Definitely lost the plot somewhere. I stretch again, and laugh at myself, at the scitzoid embolism making me see things, at this life of mine that can only get inevitably more complicated, until I clumsy my way into an early grave. Somewhere there’s an audience laughing at me, gales of canned laughter that roar and swell with my every futile lurch. In a hundred years people will gawk at how monumentally fucked up I am right now.

Dad taught me that one. If anything gets bad, imagine worse. Think of every situation ‘though that dark mirror’. Let it sink in, and then laugh. Nothing I can do about it at the moment, so why worry?

I sit up, chuckling, but feeling better. The bones in my feet pop as I stand up and pad gingerly to the door to let Sandy out. I head upstairs for a wash and stand under the shower head for long minutes as scalding water brings me back to life.

The whole time, I’m ignoring the question thats floating around my head like a thunder cloud. I think about needing dog food, and a new leash. I think about the Masterton file that’s still in my car. I thank all thats holy that its a Saturday, and how the bathroom tiles could do with re-grouting. When everything that could hide me from the question is done, I stare through it, unsee it, because anything else would be crazy.

How do I find you?

I brush my teeth, get dressed and guiltily strip our double bed. I have toast and jam with the radio on, put some rubbish out, careful not to look for you by the gate, and then decide that the front lawn could do with a trim. It’s still cold enough to turn my breath into steam, but I’m all industry and popping joints, cause I won’t think about the question. Because if I did, I’d never stop.

Outside the front door, the street hasn’t woken up yet. No kids gather in brittle bunches, birds chirp, trees move. The same shitty scene I’ve lived without you for so long. This is my life, and I hate it, without you. I look down at the grass strimmer, and watch my resolve weaken.

I change my mind half-way through unwrapping the flex. My fingers ache, and its far too early in the year to cut the grass. The Masterton file shouldn’t take too long, but as soon as I’ve thought of it, the drive to face it evaporates in an image-board of figures and a loose laptop power-port on a kitchen table scattered in paperwork.

I stand still and unsee. Won’t face the question. Can’t. Won’t stop.

I want to find you.

My thoughts are going round in circles, between the question and anything but the question, a short circuit between what I want and what I know to be … normal. And all this from the man who got so drunk a couple of nights ago, that he danced naked in his living room while alphabetising his CD collection.

Mad fools must have balls of steel to get though this kind of existential crisis, and then jump anyway.

I put the strimmer away, lock the shed, fill Sandy’s water bowl, grab the car keys and go and buy dog food.